


Winds of Change - Interlude: Wild Growth

by AlterEgon



Series: Winds of Change [2]
Category: Enchantment Emporium - Tanya Huff, Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Bardic Magic, Dragons, Gen, Rescue, Seelie Realm, UnderRealm, music is magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 22:44:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12735813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterEgon/pseuds/AlterEgon
Summary: Charlie had promised Clary she'd look into getting Simon away from the Seelie Queen. Charlie keeps her promises. Jack helps.





	Winds of Change - Interlude: Wild Growth

**Author's Note:**

> If Johnny Cash is banned from the Seelie Realm in future, this is probably Charlie's fault entirely.
> 
> Best thanks go to my dear betas, Tao and J.C.  
> More thanks, of course, goes to F. for the happy cheerleading, food-cooking and random interjections of "How many words?" every time I got up from the computer.

And the blood gave life  
to the branches of the tree.  
And the blood was the price  
that set the captives free  
_Johnny Cash: Redemption_

*

 

The snowflakes drifting gently to the ground weren't quite enough to leave a white cover on the grass. What they did do, however, was cling to the two travelers making their way through the forest, leaving a frosty pattern on their shoulders and arms, with a lesser sprinkling down the fronts where the wind hit them.

Neither of them was short, but they seemed all the taller for their lean, wiry frames with not an ounce to spare. They were dressed sensibly for long outdoor hikes, identical coats of felted dark-blue wool layered over linen shirts and sturdy trousers to keep away the wind and add some protection from rain. Their feet were covered by knee-height top boots made of leather too fine-grained to have grown on any creature of the Midrealms. Soft gloves of the same material completed their outfits. Embroidery placed in tiny, delicate stitches of silver and gold thread around the cuffs and down the fronts of those coats, the fine, tight weave of the linen and the beaded patterns visible on their shirts where the coats opened in front warned against mistaking these two for poor, homeless travelers roaming the Underrealm.

They looked to be brothers, the most characteristic features speaking of a clear family resemblance, eyes a unique shade of grey shining from faces framed by hair that was an identical blond on both of them. They  wore it styled the same way, thin strands tightly braided backwards on either side of their heads and merging into one where they met, effectively keeping most of their hair under control. A few loose strands fell freely around their faces. The soft waves there only served to heighten the effect of another thin braid ending in a small bead.

It was impossible to tell which one of them was the older. Their faces, albeit relaxed and unconcerned as they talked, showed traces of past adventures.

One of them, slightly taller than his companion, sported a crescent scar on one cheek and another, more deliberate looking one, vertically down the other side of his face from the corner of his eye to his jaw. He wore a single crystal-drop earring that shone with fairy power.

The other's ears were decorated with simpler rings, one in the right and three along the upper rim of the left. A circular burn scar marked his jaw, while an old cut divided one eyebrow.

They carried little in the way of baggage, apparently able to fit their belongings into a satchel and the side pockets of an instrument bag that was strapped securely to the shorter one's back.

The pace they set was brisk, but clearly comfortable for them. They were joking all the way until their path was blocked by crossed lances.

Faced with a group of Seelie knights in leather armor, they stood still at ease and without betraying the kind of concern that might have been appropriate, given that they were outnumbered three to one and held no weapons of their own.

"Turn around, mortals," the leader of the knights said, fixing them with a long, penetrating look that spoke of a warning not given idly. "Leave now. This place is not for your kind." His long, black-and-blue hair was brushed back to expose pointed ears.

The wanderer carrying the instrument turned towards him, giving him a silent scrutiny as if trying to judge whether the knight was worthy of being addressed by him. That look alone bordered on a challenge from mortal to seelie – a challenge that would not carry a great promise of survival here in the Seelie Realm. He studied the half-circle of a scar that ran around the knight's left eye, branching out on his cheek as if whoever had cut him had veered off the proper path and had to start again.

His voice was melodious and full, with a musical tone even to his speaking voice. "I appreciate your concern, Meliorn. But we've come to see your queen."

The knight's eyes widened almost imperceptibly at being addressed by his name.

He had some appreciation for recklessness, though – enough to not necessarily want to see it destroyed so easily. He shook his head at them, in the same way that an elder might react to a child. "You don't want that. She wouldn’t see you anyway."

"I hear your queen appreciates music." The musician's eyes never strayed from the knight's face, holding his eyes with a boldness that suggested that this was not, at least, an ordinary mortal.

The other wanderer took a step forward, resting one hand lightly on the crossed lances. "We would see your queen now. Lead the way or let us pass." The crystal in his ear shone, reflecting more than just the sun filtering through the foliage. Almost as an afterthought, he added: "Please."

Meliorn waved his hand with an air of 'Oh fine – it's your funeral', indicating for the lance-bearers to take down their weapons. He had done more than his duty by warning these two away. It was not his job to protect them from their own stupidity. At least it was true that the queen appreciated music, so she was probably not going to be too displeased with him for delivering these to her. Maybe this one could supplement her current bard.

The knights fell into step around them as they continued to walk down the path, escorting them and making sure that they would not stray from the path they were on.

"I didn't catch your names," Meliorn noted after a few steps.

"That's okay," the musician told him. "We didn't give them."

*

Their escort parted, giving them a clear view of the assembled courtiers. There was no mistaking the queen among them, and it wasn't because her bright red hair stood out starkly, or because of the tiara perched on it. She had that air of self-satisfied power that was impossible to ignore and that bled out of those accustomed to ruling unchallenged all too often.

She was beautiful by any standards, but hers was a cruel beauty promising destruction to those who would abandon the proper caution in dealing with her. Her green eyes held a cold light as she turned to regard her visitors.

They strode forward, stopping at the last moment that could be considered an appropriate distance. There, they went down on one knee, the motion so perfectly synchronized they had to have practiced it. They kept their eyes cast down, waiting to be addressed.

"You are bold, mortals, to walk in here like this," the queen finally spoke. "Bold, but not very wise. What is it that you desire?"

"Your highness." The musician did not move from his kneeling position, his right arm resting on his bent knee. He straightened, though, raising his head and meeting the queen's gaze with a stare that was far from appropriate when dealing with a sovereign. "We have come to retrieve the vampire."

The queen laughed.

Her two visitors did not move.

She pointed at a young man with dark hair standing a little way off to the side. He was dressed in seelie costume, but he lacked the vine patterns growing in the skin of the assembled fair folk. He carried a guitar of sorts, though it was shaped strangely and made of no wood the Midrealms had ever seen.

"That vampire?" the queen asked, scornful amusement still dripping from her voice. "I think not."

"That vampire," the traveler confirmed, calmly and as if entirely unaware of the danger he and his companion were in. "I see no other here."

"My queen," the other traveler spoke. His tone suggested that he found this affair quite amusing. "You have had your pleasure with him, I'm sure. It's time for him to leave. We will take him back where he belongs. You will not come after him, nor harm those dear to him, nor harm those whose ill fortune might otherwise affect him. In return, we will leave your court and not come back unless given pressing reason. That is quite reasonable, isn't it?" He sounded as if he was serious about his announcement. Though still kneeling, he spoke as if he, himself, was a king, or at least an impertinent prince demanding obedience just because it was him who said so.

The queen laughed again, showing teeth too numerous and pointy to pass as even remotely human. "You amuse me," she declared. "And so I will let you live for a while at least. As for my vampire – he has no desire to leave my court. But please – feel free to try and convince him."

She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture, which the two took as their cue to stand.

Meliorn watched them with something almost like pity in his eyes. He clearly didn't assume that any of them – vampire or mortals – were going to leave the court alive.

*

They were taken to a room with walls looking like a mesh of overgrown ruins and interwoven vines. The richly set table at the center of the room might have been seen as an act of goodwill and hospitality, hadn't it been for the infamous curse on fairy food that bound anyone who let it pass their lips to the realm.

The vampire looked bored, and not in the least interested in his would-be rescuers, but he followed, more to humor his queen than these two strangers.

"We would talk alone," the musician said, addressing the escort who had stopped just inside the doorway.

The seelie knight raised an elegantly arched eyebrow at that and wordlessly stood on the other side of the entrance. It didn't matter. The walls had ears anyway. None of them doubted _that_.

"Simon."

The vampire only looked confused, as if he wasn't quite sure who that name belonged to.

Almost as one, the two visitors sighed.

"Jack…" the musician started.

There was no need to continue. Jack reached up to touch the crystal dangling from his ear, drawing on the power inside it and throwing it with a motion as if launching a bird from his palm.

It settled around them, clinging to the walls.

"We can talk now," he said. "Anyone listening in will hear meaningless chatter."

That didn't have the desired effect. In fact, it rather worked towards the opposite. Without deigning to give any response, Simon strode towards the door – until he walked head-first into the shield.

"Guard!" He called.

Jack made an exasperated sound. "I just said they won't hear us," he pointed out. "That includes spellbound vampires trying to get us into trouble."

*

The vampire, who had at one point of his life indeed been called Simon, turned to face them again. Who were these people, to waltz in here and announce they were going to drag him away? He had no wish to leave this place. This was home.

He had all that he could possibly want. His queen was most supportive of his music. His wishes were fulfilled almost as soon as he stated them.

He barely remembered the life he had had before, but when he did, he mostly remembered the hardships, the conflicts, the refusals … no one denied him here.

Spellbound? He'd show them spellbound.

Actually, he hadn't had human blood in a very long time. Maybe he should just take care of them for the queen…

That thought felt nice. He turned, his gaze narrowing as he focused on the musician. He might still need the other one to get rid of the barrier.

A burst of vampiric speed brought them face to face, but he had only a moment's satisfaction of taking in the surprise registering in his intended dinner's eyes before something barreled into him from the side, tearing him away before his teeth could connect.

He couldn't remember ever having hit a floor that hard. Certainly not since he'd turned into a vampire. The force of it actually left him dazed for a moment.

When he'd gathered his wits again, he found himself looking up into Jack's face. He seemed more annoyed than he was angry.

That man was also far heavier than any human had a right to be. No amount of struggling would dislodge him from where he sat straddling Simon's chest, pinning down his arms and rendering him virtually helpless.

The vampire couldn't help a snarl, showing his fangs at their full length. It didn't quite seem to impress his captor.

"Oh, hold still." He sounded somewhat like a parent who was entirely fed up with his offspring's antics. "We don't have the time for this."

With that, he pulled off one glove with his teeth and flexed his fingers.

Fingernails morphed into claws, shiny black and sharply tipped.

As the vampire watched, horror at what those claws might do to him warring with the fascination of realizing that this man was not, in fact, as ordinary mundane as he had seemed, he pushed back his sleeve and rested one claw against the soft flesh on the inside of his arm, just where the bluish line of a vein stood out starkly to any blood-drinker's vision.

The claw pushed in, moving through flesh like a scalpel and leaving behind a deep puncture from which blood welled the moment the point was retracted.

Turning his arm, Jack held it over Simon's face, angling it so the red drops would hit where he wanted them, but not getting close enough to let the vampire actually sink his fangs in.

The blood burned on Simon's lips. It burned in his mouth, on his tongue, all the way down his throat and left the feeling of hot coals in his stomach. The feeling spread, searing through his body, like a hot, cleansing wave that left behind a lingering feeling of soreness – and clarity.

Closing his eyes, Simon took a deep, shuddering breath he didn't strictly speaking need. His mind needed a moment to process what had happened.

"You can let me up now," he said, calmly, when he was sure he had his voice under control.

Jack shifted his weight, rose in a motion that was more reminiscent of seelie than it was of mortals, and held out a hand to Simon to help him back up, too. The puncture was already closing. The smell of that strange blood was growing weaker.

"You surely aren't what you seem to be," Simon observed when they were face to face again. "I'm surprised she let you in at all, and talk to me without a stronger guard."

The blond man shrugged. "Don't hold it against her. We came prepared. Charlie's got no power signature. I've shut away most of my own." He grinned, and that grin was every bit as predatory as the queen's own could be. "And I wear a crystal that's notoriously ill-shielded and leaking all over the place to mask what's left."

Simon's eyes went to the earring pendant, then to Charlie, who was, luckily, none the worse for his attempted assault. "You're…" He started, but stopped himself when he realized he wasn't entirely sure what he was going to say.

"A Bard," Charlie said. "I use power. I don't hold it. I show up no differently from what you guys call mundanes on any kind of magic radar, unless I'm working. Now. I'm sure Clary would have come herself to kick the queen's ass and get you back, but she and your other friends are banned from Court and can't actually get anywhere close to here. So we figured we'd give it a try."

Simon sighed. "I appreciate that. But I can't come with you. I made a deal with the queen – my service for my girlfriend's freedom and continued safety."

"If you made a deal with her…" The frown was audible in Jack's voice. "Why did she enthrall you like that?"

"That wasn't for me." The memory made him feel icy. "That was meant as punishment for Clary, just in case she did find a way through. Making sure I would…" He faltered briefly, thinking of how close he had just come to acting on that spell, "that I would do anything in order to stay here. Also, she found some fault with my music. I wasn't putting all my heart into it, she said. As if I wasn't quite happy to be here. So I guess she made me."

"So," Jack said, calmly sitting down in one of the chairs and picking a fruit out the bowl that looked somewhat like an apple to turn it over in his hand, "When you agreed to enter her service – under duress, as it seems – did you specify a duration of said service?"

Simon shook his head. "I think she meant it to be indefinite."

"I don't care what she meant," Jack told him. "Did you specify, or did you not?"

"We didn't."

Charlie joined Jack at the table, but left the food alone. Simon thought that that was a wise course of action. "Look. First rule when dealing with the fey? Never be vague. Seriously.  They're masters at interpreting things any way they like. This time, though – we can use this and do some interpretation of our own. We'd surely have a much harder time extracting you from her if you'd actually signed on for a hundred years or something."

"She's not going to let me go." Simon felt something like despair at the thought.

"Oh, she will," Jack assured him. "She'll let you go, and she will leave your friends alone in future. She just doesn't know it yet."

The bard nodded a confirmation. There was something off about him – something that couldn't just be explained with being not quite as mundane as he seemed. Simon couldn't put a finger on it just yet, though.

"What do you propose?"

"We could have slipped into the Wood with you and away." The inflection suggested that Charlie wasn't talking about the forest outside the court. "But given the implied threat to your friends, it's probably the wiser choice to leave the way we came: through the front door and with a statement."

Simon snorted at that. "You think she's just going to let us leave?"

"No." Jack told him. "I think she's going to throw a tantrum and give us an excuse to leave a very clear message for her. Trust me, Simon – we know what we're doing."

"I know what _she_ 'll be doing," Simon shot back. "The moment she realizes I'm no longer under her spell, she'll cast a new one. And you just saw what that does."

Charlie gave him a thoughtful look. "You have some of Jack's blood in you right now. That should give you some protection." The bard moved to free his guitar from its case. "I can give you a charm to support that. It won't prevent a spell from affecting you entirely, but it'll be a buffer between you and it, and buy you time to shake it off."

"How?" Simon asked. If music had helped with that, he surely would have noticed before.

"I'll give you an earworm," Charlie told him, grinning. "A metaphysical earworm, anchored in your head."

For a moment, Simon was distracted by the guitar. For a wooden instrument, it felt strangely alive to him – and it wasn't a comforting, cuddly kind of alive either. If that guitar had been a dog, it would have been a Doberman trained to use its teeth. He wasn't sure he wanted any music made on that instrument to touch him, let alone be lodged in his head as an earworm.

Still, given the alternative…

"Do it."

*

Meliorn watched the three of them emerge from the room.

It was impossible to miss that _something_ had happened in there. Though Simon was trying not to show it, his posture had changed slightly, a certain hint of belligerence in his movements that hadn't been there when they'd gone in. Someone less observant might have missed it – but at that moment, Meliorn was convinced that his queen's spell on the vampire was gone.

In fact, he thought that he might have missed it if he hadn't been waiting for it. The way those two had come in, all cocky self-confidence and demands, had been just a bit too much for a pair of mere mundanes who had somehow found a way to spend time in their realm without being killed.

The queen favored them with an icy look.

"Your highness," the musician, now carrying the guitar case in one hand instead of on his back began, and Meliorn almost winced at the tone. "It is time for us to leave. Simon has chosen to come with us. His time in your service is over. You've had your fun with him – and he's needed back home."

That got him a laugh in return, a cruel, scornful sound with no mirth whatsoever in the mix. "I think you misunderstood my meaning, bard," the queen informed them. "I said you could try and convince him. I didn't say you could take him."

A slow, deliberate nod followed. "Fair enough. So we'll take him without your permission. It really doesn't make that much of a difference to us."

The court had gone deathly silent now. No one had, in the very long memories of anyone present, ever dared to speak to the queen like that. Several hands had gone to the hilts of weapons.

"I think not," the queen said. "But do try to convince me. You carry an instrument. Why don't you play?"

There was a light shining in her eyes that Meliorn could see clearly even from where he stood. She was like a cat now, playing with her prey, aiming to give them the impression that they were almost free to go.

The musician shrugged and bent to unclasp the case.

Out came a guitar that should probably not have been wielded by a mortal. He wondered how an instrument that emanated so much energy could have come into the hands of a mundane. Those two must have had some kind of sponsor in the Underrealm, which went some way towards explaining why they had survived so far. It did nothing at all to explain their impossible – or downright suicidal – behavior here in court.

The instrument sounded like a guitar should, though with the power to carry farther than expected. The player's skill was extraordinary. Meliorn had thought he had heard outstanding skill when Simon had played for the queen after she had put her spell on him, when he had thrown all he had into the music.

Now he realized that, as bards went, the queen's pet barely made journeyman level. Here he was listening to a master of the instrument, hands moving on the strings at incredible speed, teasing sequences of sound from it that a single guitar shouldn't have been able to produce. The tune had a compelling quality to it, catching and binding everyone's attention and rooting them momentarily in place as they stared and listened.

The queen, by virtue of age and position more resilient than most, shook off the effect the moment the last note dissipated into nothingness.

"Impressive," she admitted, her smile no less cruel than it had been before. "How about a trade, bard? The vampire leaves with your friend. You stay and take his place."

"Tempting," the musician told her. "But I think I'll pass."

A dramatic sigh came from the queen. "You're sure I cannot sway you?"

The bard didn't even pretend to consider, mutely shaking his head in response.

"How about a farewell kiss at least?"

Well, he couldn't be that stupid, Meliorn thought – only to be proven wrong the next moment, as the bard shrugged and promptly jumped up onto the queen's dais.

"Sure." He said. "Whyever not?"

The seelie knight barely suppressed an eye-roll that he was sure would have displeased his queen. Stepping in now would have been a most unwise course of action for him if he wished to keep his own life.

As it was, all he could do was watch the bard move towards his doom, approaching the queen and aiming for a rather symbolic kiss on the cheek.

A shift of her position, a slight turn of her head, and she converted that kiss into something else, lips locking on lips.

Simon now looked deathly pale. The bard's companion was still standing at ease, as if the entire thing didn't concern him. Had he really not understood yet that neither of them was going to leave the court?

By the end of that kiss, the bard's hands were in the queen's hair, the guitar wedged between them. Meliorn could feel the power of her spell settle on the man.

"You for the vampire," the queen repeated. "I think that is a fair trade."

It really wasn't, Meliorn thought, but the bard now nodded, his eyes resting on the monarch with an adoring expression.  "Okay," he said, a dreamy quality to his voice. He had put his hands in his pockets and seemed content to just stand there and watch her.

Far from seeming concerned, his companion snorted in a way more fitting for someone who was putting up with a somewhat eccentric relative's antics. "C'mon Simon," he said. "You heard the queen. We're going."

He would have marched off, it seemed, without looking back, dragging an entirely perplexed vampire by his arm.

They got as far as the edge of the court.

A brief motion of the queen's hand brought a tangle of vines shooting from the ground, wrapping around the blond man's leg and writhing up his torso. He managed to pivot and turn before his second foot was caught by the plant as well. Thorns started digging into the fabric of his clothes, and probably the skin below.

"I've reconsidered," the queen announced. "I'd rather have both of them. Imagine the music they can make as a duo."

Now Simon really looked like he was going to be sick any moment.

The queen beckoned, and, his movements unnatural and somewhat jerky, he crossed the square back towards the dais.

The bard seemed entirely unconcerned by what was happening – not an unexpected occurrence given the queen's spellwork.

What Meliorn found noticeable, however, was that the other traveler, now fully caught in the vines, didn't appear particularly perturbed by this turn of events either.

For some reason, the vines seemed unwilling to crush his body or restrict his breathing. They merely held on. It was not a behavior he had ever seen in them before.

Neither had his queen – he was quite certain of that by the brief, annoyed glance she spared them. She only took a second to regroup, though. "Meliorn, get rid of that."

The only one of the three who reacted to that was Simon, who was now standing by the dais, awaiting further instructions.

Meliorn drew his dagger. He shouldn't have felt as reluctant about this as he did. These two had come to the court, made demands, displeased the queen… this was only the logical consequence of their own bad behavior. Still, he hadn't been entirely in agreement with a lot of what the queen was doing recently, and this wasn't helping.

Seeing no way around it that wasn't going to leave him "dead, dead, dead," as the queen liked to say, he turned towards the captive.

To his surprise, the man met his eyes and smiled.

"Well, Meliorn?" His voice was low, intended only for him. "Do you know where the heart is?"

Did that man _want_ to die? At that moment, a different thought occurred to the knight. It was outrageous, unlikely and entirely inappropriate. Still, as he approached and placed the tip of his dagger against the man's chest, he wasn't sure that he wasn't just acting as a gear in their plans. Whatever those were to require a sacrifice like this was beyond his imagination.

For a moment, he considered slitting his throat instead, just in case, but a hand was already resting on his. That hand was strong for a mundane – too strong for a mundane. He shouldn't have been able to extract it from the vines to begin with, but the vines weren't working right on him anyway…

Meliorn pushed the thought away. Whatever happened, he couldn't be faulted by his queen for carrying out her orders. He had shifted his stance a little, standing between her and her prisoner and blocking her view of his movements with his body.

He wasn't entirely sure why he had decided to do _that_ , except that what the queen was doing – had been doing all along, at least since she had teamed up with Valentine, and probably even before that – was wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, the words echoed in his mind.

If there was some kind of greater plan involved in this, he was not going to resist it. If there wasn't, it wasn't going to make a difference.

He applied pressure to the blade, and he wasn't entirely sure whose hand actually eased the dagger into flesh, guiding it until it hit some resistance and, with a brief effort, pushed through.

The gloved hand slipped off of Meliorn's, falling to the man's side. Still smiling a smile that made even the seelie feel cold, he gave a tiny nod, as if silently commending his executioner for a job well done.

Meliorn jerked back his dagger, releasing a flow of blood as it came out.

The man went limp the same moment, held somewhat upright only by the vines slung around him.

"It's done," the queen said, with a note of cool triumph in her voice. "Play, bard. Sing. Let us celebrate your new position."

Meliorn thought he could see tears on Simon's face even across the square. He turned his attention back to the man bleeding out before him. How much blood fit into a mundane? He wasn't sure, but there was a lot of blood flowing here, already pooling at his feet. Were mundanes supposed to bleed that fast?

His gaze lifted, moving along the body suspended by the plant. He couldn't see his face, obscured as it was now by hair curtaining it.

There was something else that he did notice, however: The man's chest was still rising and falling evenly, his breathing not faltering in the least. No matter the wound, no matter the blood, this man wasn't dead – or even close to dying.

All things considered, it left only one conclusion: While Meliorn still wasn't sure _what_ he was looking at, suspicion turned into certainty: this wasn't a simple mundane.

Following a sudden thought, and not giving himself the time to reconsider, he reached for the only thing that had previously been noticeably _other_ about him. While his queen was focused on the bard painstakingly tuning his guitar and complaining vocally that the climate made it go off already, Meliorn unclasped the crystal from the man's ear.

He thought he saw his mouth twitch through the golden strands that were brushed aside by the motion.

 _Thank you, Meliorn_. The man's voice didn't come from his lips, but seemed to generate right inside Meliorn's ears. _That wasn't strictly speaking necessary, but I appreciate the thought. Keep it. You may need it some day. Now scat. You don't want to be standing there in a moment._

All things considered, it was probably prudent to heed that advice. Meliorn moved closer to his queen, but not before pocketing the crystal. A little voice of caution in his head told him he should have just dropped it.

It wasn't very loud.

The bard had finished tuning and was starting on a tune.

Celebrate, the queen had said.

There was nothing celebratory about that music.

It was dark, haunting and gloomy.

Then a voice joined the music, and Meliorn understood, as if someone had spelled it out specifically for him in big, boldly illuminated letters, that the queen had made, not one, but two mistakes in dealing with the Bard.

The second had been allowing her to sing.

*

Simon felt like crying.

 _We know what we're doing_ , they'd said. _Trust us._

He had, and now Jack was dead or dying, bleeding out rapidly in the grip of that vine that Simon remembered only too well from his own experience with it, and Charlie had allowed the queen to cast her spell and had turned into a mindless puppet…also an experience that Simon would have preferred not to remember.

He found it surprisingly easy to resist the smell of Jack's blood, though. It had an acidic tang to it, and the taste he had had was still burning in his body. It was working at least – that, or Charlie's earworm spell, or both. He had felt the queen's compulsion, and allowed himself to act on it, since all seemed lost anyway, but he knew he could have resisted it if there'd been any kind of point to resistance.

Then Charlie began to sing.

Simon knew the song. It was not, in any manner of performance, ever going to come even close to the celebration he queen had demanded. Still, he hadn't ever heard it sung like _that_.

Today, that song was a threat.

Turning around, he could only stare at Charlie. The power she was spinning in her music was so thick he felt that if he strained a little, he would be able to see it in the air. The guitar seemed to have come alive in her hands. The thin line of red string threaded under the strings and tied around the bottom end of the headstock, clearly visible to his vampiric vision, hadn't been there before. She must have put that on during her long tuning session.

As she stood there, playing and singing, he couldn't fathom for a moment how anyone could have ever mistaken her for a man.

On second thoughts, it wasn't hard to see: It had been what she'd wanted them to do. Between her too-thin body, a deliberate choice of clothing, some skillfully applied make-up to visually adjust the angles of her face, and a careful pitch of her voice, she'd created an impression and enforced it simply by not giving them reason to expect anything else.

New growth was sprouting now where Jack's blood had soaked into the ground, connecting with the roots of those vines, drawn out by the song. Tendrils thickened, lengthened, wound around each other, stretching upwards to form an odd, spiraling trunk. More vines joined it, weaving themselves into and around the existing structure, which had reached nearly twice Simon's height in the space of just a few heartbeats. Branches split off to the side, dividing further until each tip ended in a single vine again, giving the resulting shape the appearance of a tree.

A tree that burst through the existing canopy and that had a mind of its own, as evidenced by the way one of those vine-branches shot down to slap away the first Seelie who took the liberty to try and take a sword to the tangle.

The queen stood rooted in place, her mouth open, straining to speak, but apparently unable to produce any sound. The red thread on Charlie's guitar, Simon realized, was no kind of thread at all.

"Don't be upset," Charlie said, her speaking voice carrying over the music she continued to play on the strings without breaking rhythm once. "It's an easy mistake to make, and you're in good company. Why, just think of where it got the Witch-king of Angmar."

The queen didn't respond to that, though whether that was because she couldn't, or because she had never seen Lord of the Rings and had no idea what Charlie was talking about wasn't entirely clear to Simon.

Charlie went into another reiteration of her chorus as she made her exit from the dais, and gave a brief jerk of her head in Simon's direction, indicating for him to follow her.

He didn't need to be told twice.

Several of the knights moved towards them, only to find their path blocked by masses of vines. The tree had stopped expanding, but it clearly had feelings about their safety.

An arrow soared and thudded into a branch that seemed to come out of nowhere, shielding them. It was followed by a scream as another branch connected, whip-like, sweeping the archer off her feet and flinging her several meters across the square.

Jack had straightened, his weight once again on his own feet. The dark stain down the front of his clothes didn't fit his otherwise undisturbed appearance at all. Simon thought he could see a flash of golden scale through the cut in his coat and shirt.

He touched the vines almost lovingly, and they unwound from him, retreating into the ground.

The moment they were gone, a flash of light and flame engulfed the man, the heat searing without leaving any actual burns.

The fire died down, and Jack was gone.

Out of the corner of his eye, Simon could see Meliorn freeze. The seelie knight had evaded the tree and moved sideways around the square, keeping enough of a distance to not be caught in any kind of fallout from whatever was about to happen. He didn't know _what_ Meliorn had expected to happen, but he was reasonably sure it hadn't included the appearance of the largest golden-scaled dragon Simon had ever laid eyes on.

Admittedly, it was the only dragon Simon had seen in the flesh so far, and he wasn't sure he needed a repeat exposure. He also wasn't sure he wanted to get any closer to the creature than he had to, but Charlie clearly had different ideas.

She stopped playing when they reached the dragon, holding out a hand to Simon.

Climbing a dragon wasn't exactly on Simon's bucket list, but given his other options, he let her boost him up and scrambled to find a place behind the huge head.

Charlie followed, clearly a much more expert dragon mounter and dragon rider than he was.

The queen, released when the music had stopped, was already ordering pursuit, which was rendered somewhat difficult by the mass of vegetation determined to not let them come to harm.

"Hold on!" Charlie cautioned, shoving one of the long, fleshy ends of Jack's crest into his hands.

He barely had the time to close his fingers on it before the dragon beneath him tensed and took off, launching himself into the air without a regard for the tree branches he broke on his way up.

None of them belonged to the tree of vines. That one was smart enough to clear the way.

*

Flying a dragon through the Seelie Realm was a once in a lifetime experience, Simon thought. He didn't know where they were going, though he suspected they were headed for some suitable exit.

"She's going to be pissed," he noted after a while of undisturbed flight, as his thoughts were starting to coalesce into something resembling coherent again. "Royally pissed."

"I certainly hope so," Charlie responded. "And remembering this next time she decides to mess with someone. I suspect she'll be busy for a while, though."

"Busy cleaning up the mess your tree made?"

Charlie laughed. "Busy moving her court. I don't think she'll enjoy that place much anymore. That tree has feelings about proper behavior."

Simon twisted to look at her. "She could just have it cut down."

"Not very likely," Jack's voice sounded, coming from somewhere around Simon. "It's full of dragon blood. Trying to cut pieces off will equal suicide."

"How long do we have?" Simon tried not to panic at the thought. "Before she comes after us? Me, Clary, Maia, someone?"

"She won't." Charlie had let go of the dragon, balancing without holding on now as she started to work on her guitar. "She doesn't want us to come back. Not now that she knows we have a dragon and are willing to use him."

"A Dragon Prince who is also a Gale and a sorcerer and can walk through fair-folk wards because it was a court that trained him," Jack pointed out. Simon understood maybe half of that, but it sounded like it was supposed to reassure him, so he decided to let it.

"Besides, I'm keeping this." Charlie had somehow managed to undo her knot without tearing the material and was winding three long red hairs into a neat coil around her fingers. "Just in case."

*

They emerged into the sky above New York. Simon sighed with relief at being home, then almost groaned as he realized he was going to have to face both Maia and Clary now.

"Where to?" Jack asked him, though, and Simon gave directions to the Jade Wolf, wondering if the parking space was large enough for the dragon to land.

That, it turned out, wasn't a problem. Still cloaked in his glamor, the dragon shifted in size, almost dislodging his vampire rider while Charlie compensated for the change with the ease of long practice, and touched down.

He went up in flames as soon as they had both slid off and landed safely on the pavement.

In the moment between Jack's appearance as a naked human male and the addition of interestingly printed clothes – coinciding with the disappearance of a few discarded magazines from the side of the street – Simon found the spot on Jack's chest where Meliorn had stabbed him.

It seemed like barely a nick in the skin now.

Following his eyes, Jack gave him a broad grin. "I'm not really human," he said, pointing out the obvious. "Or at least, not only human. My other shape's always there, even if it's not fully in the same realm with me. You don't survive twenty years at a Court without learning to deflect damage to the larger body. That dagger is nothing to a dragon."

Given the size of the dragon, Simon didn't doubt that.

Charlie, in the meantime, had pulled a small rectangle from a pocket of her guitar case. She was holding out a hand to Simon. "I need a hair from you."

He wasn't sure about the wisdom of letting her have one, given what she'd done to the Seelie queen not too long ago, but he had an idea that refusal wouldn't go over well.

She placed the hair against the dark plastic, bending it into a shape that looked like it could have been a shadowhunter rune.

Before Simon's eyes, the hair melted into the plastic casing.

Apparently, it was supposed to do that. With a satisfied sound, Charlie flipped the object over and handed it to him. 

It was a phone.

"Yours," Charlie said. "Feel free to lose it as often as you like - it'll always come back to you."

"Huh." Simon stared down at it. It looked like a cheap prepaid phone to him. "Thanks, I guess?"

Jack patted his arm in a manner that surely was supposed to be more reassuring than it felt, coming from an enormous dragon concealed in human shape. "Call us if you need us. And say hello from us to Clary and the others."

Right. 'Clary and the others' would have some explaining to do about how they had gotten a Dragon Prince and a Bard to come rescue him from the Seelie Queen.

He probably should have said something more, but the two relieved him of the task of coming up with a suitable remark by waving and, moving in perfect unison, taking one step towards where the sound of banging pots and pans was coming from an open kitchen window.

They disappeared before their feet touched the ground, only the rush of air filling suddenly vacated space indicating that there had just been two people with him.

The phone in his hand vibrated.

Looking down at the screen, he smiled at the incoming text, headed by Clary's name.

_Where are you, Simon?_

Flipping the phone open, he typed in his location and hit send. They'd discuss the particulars when Clary arrived, which probably wasn't going to take long.

With that, he slipped the device into his pocket, squared his shoulders and brushed his hands twice through hair disheveled from the flight. He was already walking towards the entrance. It was probably a good idea to find Maia and let her know he was back before Clary arrived.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Wild Growth (Cover Art)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13336170) by [greeniron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greeniron/pseuds/greeniron)




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